Once you finish using the last of your Christmas stamps you’ll have a plethora of new self-adhesive postage options to choose from to mail off all those holiday-related bills.
The United States Postal Service just unveiled a list of new stamps they plan to release in 2008. Among the new postage stamps scheduled to grace envelopes next year is the face of a Hollywood legend whose eyes inspired a hit song.
Screen siren Bette Davis is being honored by the postal service on the 100th anniversary of her birth with a commemorative stamp. The 10-time Academy Award nominee will be the 14th in the Legends of Hollywood Series.
Next year also marks the centennial of the classic hit “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” The song serves as the inspiration for a stamp based on a 19th-century baseball card recalling the popular tune.
War veterans like my dad will be happy to know that next year the post office will also launch a new multiyear “Flags of Our Nation” series. It’s a 60-stamp set scheduled to include the Stars and Stripes as well as the flags of each state, the District of Columbia and territories.
Other new stamps to look for in 2008 include a series on American scientists and journalists. The former group features images of theoretical physicist John Bardeen, who co-invented the transistor; biochemist Gerty Cori, who discovered how cells use food and convert it into energy; astronomer Edwin Hubble, who proved the existence of galaxies other than our own Milky Way; and chemist Linus Pauling, who helped establish the field of molecular biology. The latter group includes journalist Martha Gellhorn, who covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II and the Vietnam War; John Hersey, whose most famous work, “Hiroshima,” describes what happened when the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city; George Polk, a young reporter killed covering the strife in postwar Greece; Ruben Salazar, the first Mexican-American journalist to have a major voice in mainstream news media; and Eric Sevareid, a broadcast journalist for CBS.
Representing Hollywood icons (and joining Davis) will be Grammy Award-winning singer Frank Sinatra. In addition, Charles W. Chesnutt will be honored with the 31st stamp in the Black Heritage series. According to postal officials, Chesnutt was an innovator among literary realists who probed the color line in American life.
Personally, I’m looking forward to buying a few books of new rat stamps. The Year of the Rat stamps will be released in a few weeks just in time to commemorate the Chinese lunar New Year. People born in the Year of the Rat (me and my mom) are said to be industrious and ambitious.
The postal service is also reissuing two 2007 Wedding Heart stamps, which feature vines that form the shape of a heart. For the first time ever these stamps will come in two denominations designed for mailing wedding invitations and RSVPs.
The “LOVE” stamp is also getting revamped for 2008. Next year the annual stamp will feature an oversized heart being transported by its owner.
Disney lovers will no doubt snatch up the new “Art of Disney: Imagination” series featuring a host of popular animated characters. The Olympic Games will also be honored with a series of stamps that will be released to coincide with the 2008 Summer Games, which will takes place August 8-24 in Beijing, China.
Also, a series of stamps calling attention to Alzheimer’s disease will be released in 2008. The new stamps were designed to raise awareness of the most common form of dementia among older people.
And, finally, exactly a year from now you will no doubt be sticking some of the post office’s newest holiday stamps on your Christmas correspondences. In 2008 you’ll get to choose from a book featuring four Holiday Nutcrackers stamps with pictures of Santa, a king, a captain and a drummer and a book of traditional Christmas stamps featuring a detail of a painting titled “Virgin and Child With the Young John the Baptist” by the Italian master Sandro Botticelli.
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